2012-01-18 - Rocknytt Interview
Jimmie Strimell was interviewed by Swedish website Rocknytt regarding the upcoming year 2012. The article was published on January 18, 2012 and was written by Sebastian Kristensen. Topics they covered were among others Dead by April's 2011 year, Death Destruction as well as the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. Script : The interview was done in Swedish and is therefore translated into English. Q: Jimmie! How has the year been? You've had a lot to do, right? Jimmie Strimell: 2011's been really good year for both DBA and DD, we've had a lot of good gigs with DBA throughout the year. We opened Sonisphere with DBA and played in front of an almost full Globe arena. We also released our long-awaited album Incomparable and went on tour in Sweden which was really fun! We also did our first proper headline tour in Europe which actually was a success. Many of the shows were upgraded to larger venues/facilities and people were like mad. Our first gig of the European tour was the craziest thing I've ever experienced during my years. We played in Manchester at Academy 3, which was totally packed with crazy fans. They flew from the stage one by one and some of them stayed on the scene and headbanged with us! We have been on tour as the opening act befor and we have understood that people likes us. But now that we are headlining it's a completely different way. You could really notice how much our fans have longed to come to our gigg to see us play and meet us personally. Really fun to see the crowd sing along to all the lyrics, they could really every single word. As for DD this year were really good for us; we did a few gigs during the winter, spring, summer. We played at the Getaway festival for the second year in a row and this year we noticed that people knew who Death Destruction were, it sure was five times as many people there to see us this time. We did a 5 week European tour opening for Hammerfall which va a crazy good start for us, must give a big thank you to those guys! Jocke, Oscar, Pontus, Fredrick and the best Anders, because they picked us as the opening act among all the great bands that are out there; a better start for DD is hard to find, we played in front of nearly packed stadiums and clubs in virtually every evening, crazy! Now we're just waiting to go out on a Sweden Tour with In Flames in April, which is also unreal good for us. What would DD be without the boys in In Flames? Q: Regarding both Dead By April and Death Destruction, a quick question - Which of these two have you have been most busy with in 2011? Jimmie Strimell: Well I was quite clearly more busy with DBA, we have more gigs right now than we have with DD. Q: Tell us something general about "Incomparable"! Jimmie Strimell: Hmm, what is there to be said about Incomparable except the fact that it's a damned good and well written album where we got our DBA sound to become even bigger and broader, more heavy riffs together with sick melodies on synth and vocals and more growl than on the previous album. We are super happy with the result and if you ask us Incomparable beats our debut album by a long way. Q: A quick question - Choose hands out a favorite song from Incomparable and Death Destruction! Jimmie Strimell: That question is always difficult to answer, I think all the songs are just as good in its own way, but if I have to choose a song from Incomparable it has to be Incomparable. Regarding Death Destruction, I think my favorite song is the song we released as our first single, Fuck Yeah. During the video for that song we have a thing to which one can see how other bands from Gothenburg support us in Death Destruction. We recorded the video for Fuck Yeah in IF Studios where members from In Flames, Hammerfall, Lillasyster, Dark Tranquility, Dead By April and Hardcore Superstar participated. Q: Before Dead By April was created you were called Nightrage you might say, what happened there, anyway? Jimmie Strimell: No, no. Nightrage was a completely different band; the protagonist of Nightrag is Marios Iliopoulos and it's been a whole bunch of line-up changes in Nightrage. When I decided to leave Nightrage to focus on songwriting together with Pontus then-bassist and drummer in Nightrage left Nightrage as well to jump into our project that later became Dead By April. Nightrage never had anything to do with Dead by April. Why I left Nightrage was because we wanted to do completely different things musically. It was quite impossible to do tours with Nightrage because we never got paid from any tour or gig. It was hard to come home from long tours completely broke and no job to go back to, it's not a game to try to succeed as a musician. Q: You really knows how to scream! Is there any screamer/singer or musician whatsoever out there that have inspired you to become the musician you are today Jimmie Strimell: Thank you! Those that inspired me the most is Phil Anselmo from Pantera, Jens Kidman from Meshuggah and Max Cavalera of Sepultura, without them I probably would not be into the music buisness. Q: Dead By April has done something revolutionary within the metal world - you have captured the pop radio's attention! Some believe that you have become sell-outs, I (and of course some others) think that you convert pop-worshipers to harder music! So to the next question - you will participate in this year's Eurovision Song Contest? Thoughts on this? Jimmie Strimell: Yes, since day one we have stood our ground with what we wants to do with DBA. It was very difficult to get record companies and others to understand our mindset about our songs that were heavy but at the same time had a real pop chorus and even have some songs that easially could be a Backstreet Boys song if you took away the heavy guitars. People may call us sell-out all they want, we do what we like best, write great music and tour the world and perform our music live. We never close ourself inside a corner and say no to playing live, it does no matter if it comes to Metaltown or if it's the Eurovision Song Contest, each gig is a way to reach out to our fans and find new fans. Of course some people may not like ourt thing, but those who likes us probably understands why we are doing everything. It's awesome if we have gotten pop-worshipers to be able to like hard rock, I feel pretty proud to know that we can get people to open up a bit more when it comes to music. When it comes to competing in the Eurovision Song Contest, it's so that, first, we love playing live no matter what. We see no difference whether it is on a Metal Festival, Bingolotto or at Melodifestivalen, we just want to go out and do our thing, playing live in front of our fans and others who have not heard us before. Personally, I do not understand why to keep going and thinking so much about what is good and maybe bad? Go out and have fun only, you only live once! Q: Pontus Hjelm left the band about a year ago ... But if I understand correctly, he has actually no role in Dead By April today? Jimmie Strimell: Well, Pontus has always had a role in the band although he is not in the band at the moment. Pontus writes all the music for the DBA, I'm co-writing melodies, phrasing and lyrics, so the two of us have never stopped writing together or work on new material just because he left the band. Pontus was eager to start playing live again during the spring 2011, and so we decided to let Pontus play again with DBA live as a "session'' guitarist. Things were a bit messy for a while in DBA when Johan was a member, we had different opinions on everything and if Johan still would be a member we would never have performed in Melodifestivalen or according to Johan "cheesy" stuff or similar things. So we decided together that we would play it safe for a while and see how everything felt now that Johan was out of the and Pontus back. May well reveal that we will announce wether Pontus remains in DBA or not in connection with the Eurovision Song Contest. '''Q: You actually ended up in fourth place as "Musician of the Year" by Rocknytt for your achievements both in Dead By April and Death Destruction, any thoughts on this?' Jimmie Strimell: Wow!! Thank you so much for that. I had no idea about this so this came as a surprise. I don't know what to say except thank you as hell, I feel honored. Q: What are Dead By April up to in 2012? Jimmie Strimell: In 2012 we will focus on playing more overseas, we have not been so much around the world. We have a few different record labels in Europe, USA, etc. that have shown great interest and we'll just try to go around and show them what we can do and try to put whatever deals with record labels in eg the U.S. so we can tour there. Our thoughts are to try put a European/UK tour before the summer + to do so many festivals we can throughout Scandinavia, Europe, hopefully in Japan and the U.S., but we'll see what our manager and booking agency finds on for us. Q: Finally - What do you think about Rocknytt? Jimmie Strimell: Wow tough question, I actually don't "papers", I never find the peace to sit still and read, but you are the best web magazine!